For the good of the game
Just minutes ago the MLB Players Association (PA)just voted down the owner’s last offer to resurrect the already tortured 2020 season. This will predictably lead to the MLB imposing a shortened schedule, some players opting out of playing at all, the PA filing a grievance against the league and the upcoming free agent class getting mauled. We’ve reached the point where there is nary an intersection in the Venn Diagram of each party’s requirements, with the likely result being a shotgun marriage of two reluctant participants merely adhering to the words of a contract. As a negotiator, this is absolutely the last place you want to end up: in my business life I’ve come to call this region the “inefficient frontier”. Neither party wins; both parties lose. And as is the case with so many negotiations, better, more trusting, more open-minded parties could have changed both dynamics and outcomes given identical facts resulting in a mutually beneficial, fair agreement that leaves neither side feeling burned. But this simply was not possible because the structure of the game is broken, and has come to resemble the game in the of the 1960s and early 1970s. This was, in John Helyar parlance, when the Lords of the Realm (the owners) ran the game as if it was their own personal money machine without much regard for those actually creating value for the game (read: the players) or the people who paid the bills (the fans). Players were property; transparency was a no-no; and spreading access to the game was not a priority. It was all about monetization. Sound familiar?
This is why we need a change. We need to repay generations of code debt to unlock the beauty of baseball, its ability to pay a positive and influential role in our society and offer attractive and fair economic returns for owners and players alike. But in order to do this we need to disentangle the role of Commissioner and what it has come to represent. There is no party or governing body that has the best interest of the game as its primary objective. One might think this would be the Commissioner but it’s not: the Commissioner is hired by and paid for by the owners. So while they work hard to present a veneer of objectivity and having the game’s best interests at heart, it’s simply not true. It’s fluff. As with most things in business, all one needs to do is follow the money and you’ll figure out why people do what they do and why they act in ways that seem, well, at odds with their stated roles. Rob Manfred, the $11 million dollar man? Paid by the owners, for the owners. It’s not hard to figure out where he’s going to come down on issues between owners and players. This is precisely why the game needs an Independent Commissioner that is paid by both the owners and the PA: the owners and the PA should be represented in negotiations by professionals whose credentials involve structuring complex multiparty transactions that have been completed with a mix of intelligence, grit and relationship skill. These people exist. With the Commissioner looking into the future for how the game can best serve all constituencies — owners, players, fans, the communities in which they operate, future growth, etc. — they can work with the owners and PA’s reps to anticipate future challenges and opportunities, operating in a mode of transparency and joint-problem solving.
I could get into the economics of how the game might be better structured and more aligned, but I’ll save that for another post. On this night, when it appears all but likely that a negotiated agreement is not in the cards, I wanted to paint a clear picture of why we are here and what has to be done in order for baseball to survive — and thrive.
